It was a partisan gathering, an impressive turnout of southern Kentucky Republicans at the Glasgow National Guard Armory last weekend.

In addition to state Senate candidate David Givens and Congressional hopeful Brett Guthrie, three of the party’s stars, state Senate President David Williams, U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and her husband, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell who is also on the ballot, addressed the faithful on hand.

They said what you might expect. Givens, Guthrie and McConnell are Kentucky voters’ best choices, they said. And didn't Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin do a bang up job in her debate with Democratic opponent Joe Biden? John McCain is a genuine American hero and he'll easily win Kentucky.

Chao said Republicans need McConnell in the Senate as a “firewall,” the final barrier to the agenda of the Democratic Congressional majority. No one in the Republican crowd disagreed because no one in the crowd realistically expects Republicans to gain seats in either chamber.

McConnell said, “Elections don’t get any bigger than this one. The differences don’t get any starker than they are in this election.”

He’s right. Whether you’re Republican or Democrat, this election offers historic possibilities in the midst of historic challenges. The country is mired in two wars while its financial system appears to be crumbling. Meanwhile, the country will elect either an African-American president or a female vice-president. The two presidential candidates, whatever the virtues or defects of their platforms and ideas, have led remarkably impressive lives.

But the magnitude of the choice and issues confronting the United States isn’t apparent in the debate. Actually, noise might be a better description of the conversation in this election.

Television ads use innuendo, questionable facts, and assail opponents'’character and integrity. Both sides, Democrats and Republicans, engage in the hyperbole. McConnell’s Democratic challenger Bruce Lunsford is flailing the Republican for voting for the financial rescue plan passed by Congress. Simultaneously, Republican Anne Northup is running an almost identical ad in the 3rd Congressional race against her Democratic opponent, incumbent John Yarmuth. Earlier this fall, McConnell ran ads which stretched fact and truth to blame Lunsford for high gas prices.

It’s not about philosophy or solutions; it's about winning. And in the presidential race, it’s sometimes about fear and division.

Fortunately, there are still some who rise above the sometimes mean-spirited rhetoric. “This is the hardest campaign I’ve seen in 25 years,” said Golda Walbert, the chairwoman of both the Barren County Republican Party and the Barren County Republican Women’s Club. “The television is so distasteful.”

The retired educator is a political realist who has seen a few campaigns and she knows how important they are. She likes to win. A Rockcastle County native, Golda (Pensol) Walbert came to Barren County in 1956 after teaching in settlement schools in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky. She devoted her professional life to loving and educating children, teaching them by example the virtues of learning, civility and grace. And she was instrumental in making the Republican Party first relevant, then a force in a previously overwhelmingly Democratic Barren County.

She demonstrated again that civility and graciousness at the rally, gently and deftly offering timely and needed wisdom, advice Democrats as well as Republicans should heed.

“First of all we must be a good citizen and then in time we can be a good Democrat or a good Republican,” she said.

Amen.

RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. He can be reached by e-mail at rellis@cnhi.com.